Jean Mensa
The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensa has disclosed that the Commission has recruited a total of 210,000 temporary officials for the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections.
She said these temporary officials include Returning Officers and Deputies, Presiding Officers, Verification Officers, Name Reference Officers, among others.
“We intend to offer them in-depth training to ensure that they operate and carry out their mandates as expected of them. For the first time in our history, we’ve created a database to capture the details of all our temporary officials,” Mrs. Mensa told Parliament.
She was briefing Members of Parliament (MPs) on the preparations towards this year’s general election.
“We can now identify each temporary staff by their names, their photographs, their voter cards, their Ghana cards, and their residential addresses. All these details have been captured on our database,” she stated.
The EC boss said previously temporary staff of the Commission were “simply names on paper,” and added, “But we believe that the production of this database. It will further enhance transparency and promote and foster the immediate accountability required from our temporary staff,” she argued.
The EC Chairperson said the Commission recognised that the performance of its officers in the field is key to the successful outcome of the elections.
“In this regard, we have beefed up our training department and made a number of key appointments to that department,” she noted.
Mrs. Mensa said the Commission was also updating its training manuals to ensure that they are easy to read and understand.
“And we believe that this will go a long way to beefing up our training and improving the competencies and performance of our temporary staff on Election Day.
Security
In the area of security and safety of voters and the Commission’s property, she indicated that the EC would continue to collaborate with the national Election Security Task Force under the leadership of the Inspector General of Police to ensure the security of all citizens at all our centers nationwide.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House